Last part of my LoS. It’s a wall, and I’m sorry about that, but there was so much to go through that it couldn’t be anything but a wall. If it’s TL
R, you can always skip to the last couple of paragraphs where I summarise.
Pizzaguy
I feel like my analysis of Pizzaguy is hampered a little by his playing style, which involves a lot of his own shorthand/acronyms that I do not understand, and short posts which often do not make his thought processes or motives clear to me. In the case of his shorthand/acronyms, I get the feeling that at times he is posting the notes he has made whilst reading along in the thread, and this reminds me a little of the same thing Melter does when he’s had to substitute in for someone, giving a very basic summary of his thoughts/suspicions so far, only in Pizza’s case they are less helpful because they mostly contain his reads/leans/whatever you want to call them, but not the reason why. I can understand why he keeps notes like that but I personally don’t get anything out of them. Also, although I think I am quite good at asking questions and sometimes at prodding in the right ways and right places, I am not the best at extrapolating conclusions from the information I generate, and sometimes I need to be hand-walked through things in order to see them properly. Because of Pizza’s very short, to the point posting style, I have difficulty understanding/trying to determine his motives for saying what he does, so his posts often take a lot of reading from me despite their brevity.
His
entry is a little odd, because he jokingly predicts the events of Day 1/Day 2 and gives the not-so-jokingly defence of “because new guy.” This could be read as a pre-emptive defence for lynching an innocent, so that if events do play out this way he can turn around and say “I told you so” and then give a dire prediction about the rest of the events coming to pass. At one time I thought pre-emptive defences were a wholly scummy thing, but here Pizza puts in me in mind of Aryndil/The Wolf in Black Death who did similar and was innocent, and I suspect that Pizza’s motive here is covering his bases so that he can be “right” rather than setting up a defence against an innocent lynch, so to me this gives me a slight innocent vibe. I do feel, though, that he’s jumping the gun a little. Maybe this series of events has happened on other forums he’s been new to, and I know that somebody joked with him in signups that he would be lynched early due to being new, but it would have been nice to be given the benefit of the doubt here.
When Pizza
mentioned that he was considering voting no-lynch, I questioned him on what it would gain us and he gave an understandable
response. When I further questioned him about why he did it so early, he came back with something
less understandable because it basically boils down to his instinct. I still think he was advocating a no-lynch far too early, though, because we were basically 5 minutes into the game. He does say, though, that he doesn’t want to end the day early, which gives me a slight positive vibe and pushes what would ordinarily be a scum action for me back into neutral territory.
I’m not going to analyse the whole Pizza/Melter war, because we’ve moved on from that and Pizza has changed his mind about Melter. Both sides had some good arguments and some bad. What I will say is that although I think Pizza was picking at things too closely and drawing some wrong conclusions, I think part of that is because he is a new player here and the best way for him to investigate is to ask a lot of questions and stir the pot to see how people react, especially if this is his normal M.O. when playing with a group of new players. I am not sure whether I would take the same actions in his place, but I get the feeling (and from what tiny bit of the Championship game I read) that this is not out of the ordinary for Pizza. Therefore, his vocal/aggressive style and picking on minutiae does not give me a read on him either way.
Pizza says that he likes to read peoples’ alignment off
ever word they utter yet I don’t think he has considered that other players might like to do the same. I base this off the fact that when I pushed him several times on why he said he couldn’t tell me how to look villagery to him, he said that it was an offhand comment and that I was misunderstanding him. If he does indeed pay attention to every word that players say, then he should know that even offhand comments can hold clues, and it may even be the offhand comments where wolves slip up. One point in his favour is that when Pizza says that I am misunderstanding him, he does not try to accuse me of purposely misunderstanding him or twisting what he is saying; he takes the approach that my misunderstanding is genuine and when I ask him for further clarification, he obliges and comes back with an answer that adequately explains to me why he said what he said. I think in this instance, a wolf would have gained more by trying to claim that I was misunderstanding on purpose; as indeed wolves have done to me before. Again, I get an overall neutral vibe from this interaction with him.
I think Pizzaguy generalises a little too much at times. For example, he describes how
sarcasm is wolfy and also tells Melter in
another post that
“Villager reaction to my wrong accusation of you is to laugh at me, give a defense MAYBE, and attack wolves. But these things are very subjective behaviours, personal to the player exhibiting them. For some sarcasm is an indicator of fur, whilst to others it is fairly standard. And to pigeon-hole all villager reactions to wolf accusations is even more inaccurate, because if all villagers acted the same way then we wouldn’t need to develop any personal meta, and finding wolves would be as easy as lynching everybody whom we observe to be deviating from this norm. But that isn’t the case. As Xardob has said, it is far more common (at least on this forum) for incorrectly accused villagers to get hyper-defensive and determined to prove themselves innocent through stubborn arguing (and I have been just as prone to that in the past as anybody else). I also struggle here to believe that Pizza thinks wolves will adhere to such obvious and specific behaviours. I know he doesn’t have any meta on Melter, or know the standard at which our players operate, but I know that Melter is a clever guy and I know that he is very self-aware, enough to alter his behaviour and exploit behaviour patterns. For example, if Melter is actually a wolf, then his argumentativeness/defensiveness with Pizza would not be because “oops, he slipped up and forgot to act like a villager” but because he is purposely acting in a way that he often does as an innocent, and knows other innocents here do, in an effort to appear to be playing in his usual innocent way. That is just an example, I don’t actually get a scum vibe from Melter right now, but I’m trying to demonstrate to Pizza how his generalisations can work against him.
Several times, Pizza makes
hey, I’m human jokes or references, for which he’s started to pick up some heat. Whilst I have seen wolves do this, it’s something I’ve seen villagers do more, so this gives me a neutral to slightly innocent vibe from Pizza. One thing that does give me the opposite vibe, however, is when he
asks for reads on Eli. He emphasises how much he is struggling to get any sort of read on Eli and says if he can’t read Eli directly he can at least read the temperature of the thread. And yet just
fifteen minutes later he comes back with what feels like a fairly solid lead on Eli. Fifteen minutes is a
very short time to go from ‘can’t read him at all, please help!’ to ‘actually, here’s how I read him after all.’ Especially when that read deviates so strongly from the general sentiment being expressed. This feels more like Pizza testing the water and trying to gauge public opinion towards Eli. The only reason I can think for Pizza to do this, is trying to gauge the opinion on a packmate. And in this post, he even exhibits the same ‘back door’ behaviour displayed and remarked on by others; he gives an innocent read but says he agrees with the people who read Eli as wolf, and that his own opinion could very quickly change. This, to me, is the strongest example of playing both sides/straddling the fence I have seen so far in this game, stronger even than Soot and it gives me a bad vibe.
Something I find a little disturbing is Pizza’s willingness to allow
others to direct his vote. I know he read Magorian strongly innocent quite early, but I think this level of trust, so early, from someone completely new to playing on this forum, is mind-boggling. I actually wish Magorian had taken him up on his offer, because I get the feeling the results may have given me a better read on both players, especially now that Pizzaguy has completely reversed his opinion on Mags; a reversal which I believe started around
here, after Mags declined Pizza’s offer of directing his vote.
I see
this post towards Melter as somewhat insulting/condescending, but I think it’s an insult born of frustration, the same frustration that Melter has towards Pizza.
I like
this post where Pizza explains why he’s now reversed his stance on Magorian. Basically, it’s nothing specific that Magorian has done, but the lack of what Pizza terms ‘villager process’ that Magorian has displayed. This gives me a fairly strong innocent vibe, because it shows me that Pizza is looking not only at what people are doing and saying, but the things they aren’t doing and saying. By reading the rests between the notes he is looking at a larger picture, and trying to match what he perceives to be villager tendencies with player behaviour in this game. I don’t agree entirely with his conclusion about Magorian from this, but I at least get a good feel from the way he is going about his investigations/observations.
A brief aside from my LoS here…
Askthepizzaguy 说:
SootShade 说:
******** hell, let me post.
LOL I just realized what you meant. My apologies. I have never run across a forum that literally prevented you from posting just because someone else spoke in the interim.
That can be turned off in your profile if you wish.
Profile > Modify Profile > Look and Layout > check “Don't warn on new replies made while posting.” box
I’m going to end this last LoS entry here. I’ve address the posts made by Pizza which gave me any sort of a feel for his alignment, regardless of the way it swung. He’s made a lot of posts which give me no feel or aren’t noteworthy for the purposes of this analysis.
Overall, it’s hard for me to determine how much conviction Pizza has in his own reads. For example, he was certain that Melter was a wolf, but then he dropped that suspicion, then read him innocent. And at first he was certain Magorian was an innocent, then he moved him into ‘meh’ territory, and now he thinks he’s a wolf. These seem like fairly strong and rapid swings, but maybe that’s the norm for the speed at which Pizza plays. His ‘I’m innocent’ jokes and ‘I’m not a wolf’ statements, whilst not automatically scummy, are starting to get weary. Also, I don’t think the “look at what I just posted, it obviously makes me an innocent, why can’t you see that?” style of banter does not make me trust him, because any player worth their salt (as a wolf) can learn how to ape innocent behaviour. I would rather reach an innocent conclusion by myself than be bludgeoned to death by somebody’s insistence.
Pizza is Neutral for me right now, similar to Hawk, but slightly less suspicious because he’s actually been here and contributing a whole lot, which is much more useful than silence. Pizza has said things which I find innocent, things which I find scummy, and things which I struggle to understand or assess. I think he’s making some good contributions, though, and bringing something fresh to the game.
